Soul Journal Prompt Collaboration – Mandalas

For the past month I have been collaborating with my soul sister – Kathryn Antyr – Collage Diva on a new Soul Journal Prompt that went live today. This months prompt is Mandalas.

I created a tutorial on creating your own affirmation mandalas.

Kathryn’s tutorial focused on creating collage mandalas. There are a range of different mediums that are employed to create the mandalas, collage, digital manipulation, zentangles and hand-drawn mandalas.

There is also a Mandala Affirmation Card Swap for Soul Journal Members and a Blog Contest. Stop by the Soul Journal Blog and have a look.

GPP Street Team Crusade #29

#75 on 101 things in 1001 days was to Participate in the GPP Street Team Crusades each month for a year. This is the third month this year that I have participated in Michelle Ward’s Crusades.

So this month we are exploring different brush effects in our journals. In a recent post – I was inspired by a fellow crusader Julie Prichard to try painting with wet brushes and let the paint drip down my page. Usually I use a dry brush, so this was a great learning curve. I have used this type of painting when painting canvases, but not in my journal.

Today I tried applied a blob of paint directly to the page – I used a silicon tool to spread the paint around until I was happy with it and then I pressed another piece of paper to it. I was actually able to make two prints, so this is useful to make aditional journal pages. Each print looks different from the first.

The next step was to dry brush colours over it. I’m pleased with how it turned out – now I’m off to journaL it and I might do another page in my other journal – stay tuned. In the mean time go check out the Crusade blog and the other crusaders.

Pay It Forward

While surfing around the different blogs that I visit – last night I happened across AN LI NA Designs – Amy Nelson’s blog – she has some really cool tutorials about bookmaking and she is making a dragon at the moment can’t wait to see if finished.

So Amy is having a Pay it Forward giveaway on her blog. I’ve decided to join her.

How it works – I will send a hand-made gift to the first three people to leave a comment on this post.  All gifts will be hand-made by me, as opposed to someone else.  I will send the gifts out sometime before May.  What you need to do in return is to pay it forward by making the same promise on your website/blog.  This exchange is open to those with active sites only.  You will then send a hand-made gift to the first three people to comment on your post. If you are one of the first three people to comment send me an email to megken(at)westnet(dot)com(dot)au with your address.

Chilli Knitting

We planted six chilli plants earlier this year – we didn’t expect them all to survive – we’ve never had much luck growing chillies. They have survived and thrived!

We didn’t expect more than a few chillies – but so far we have picked more than 2 kilograms of chillies and there are still more to be picked.

 

 

Ken has always wanted a chilli ristra to hang in the kitchen so he decided to make his own. I found this site with instructions and this morning he set about making the ristra.

 

Tying up the chillies.

 

A chilli strand in progress.

One strand of chillies completed.

Three strands of chillies waiting to be braided.

Our first chilli ristra.

 

My new journal and a journal page.

I was inspired by Lynn Fisher’s Ginormous All-purpose Journal instructions hers is 10″x10″ I thought that that might be just a bit big for me so I started a little smaller. Mine is 7″x7″. Usually I work in a journal that measures 8.5″x5″. So working in a square format is a new experience for me. When I have filled this journal I might just have to make one that is 10″x10″. I found it so easy to fill the space today.

I used some of Lynn’s instructions for the journal and used binding instructions from the online classes that I have been doing with  Kelly Kilmer.

The spine is covered in fabric and the covers have a Jack Daniels advertising poster adhered to them. I knew they would be useful when I asked the bar manager for them. I think they look cool!

I couldn’t wait to try out my new journal, and in my blog surfing today I found that Julie Prichard from The Land of Lost Luggage had uploaded a video to her blog of how she starts a journal page. I was really interested and inspired because Julie’s technique is quite different to what I do. I’m still learning about Art journaling so I like experimenting.

The following pages are the result of that experiementation.